


like real people do

by ohmygodwhy



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Character Death Fix, Fix-It, Friends to Lovers, Gen, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-The Heroes of Olympus, we do say fuck canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmygodwhy/pseuds/ohmygodwhy
Summary: He’s not a good singer, but he’s done this before. Kind of. Hazel was easy to sneak out because she was Pluto’s daughter and the doors were open. They waltzed out of the underworld together and the most he worried about was if his dad would be mad at him. This is not the same. The doors are not open and Jason is not Hades' son.“No,” Hades says.“Why not?” Nico demands. ”You’ve let it happen before.”
Relationships: Nico di Angelo & Hades, Nico di Angelo & Jason Grace, Nico di Angelo/Jason Grace
Comments: 37
Kudos: 442





	like real people do

**Author's Note:**

> me last year, reading jason's wiki to see if he and nico interact in toa and seeing 'status: deceased': hm. interesting how rick just stopped writing books
> 
> thinking abt jasico hours got out of hand and i couldnt stop thinking abt the biphobia rick put jason thru by fuckin.......killing him. im literally going off what i remember reading last year bc i refuse to see status:deceased with my own two eyes again so if i have my facts wrong...keep scrolling

i.

Nico feels him die. 

ii.

Nico is not a good singer. He’s no Orpheus. He can’t play any instrument and the gene that made his mom and sister able to carry more than two notes skipped him. He doesn’t know many songs, just little tunes his mom would hum in the kitchen or sing him to sleep with, old catchy songs he’s heard on the radio in the city, a few lines of some pop song he heard on the subway the other day. 

He’s not a good singer, but he’s done this before. Kind of. Hazel was easy to sneak out because she was Pluto’s daughter and the doors were open. They waltzed out of the underworld together and the most he worried about was if his dad would be mad at him. This is not the same. The doors are not open and Jason is not Hades' son. 

“No,” Hades says. 

“Why not?” Nico demands. ”You’ve let it happen before.”

“Hazel was different.”

“Not just with Hazel. With Orpheus, with--”

“You couldn’t bring Bianca back," Hades cuts him off, "Why would I let you bring a son of Jupiter?”

“Because it wasn’t his time. Bianca was…” he falters, “She was fated to die, and no one could change that. Jason wasn’t. He isn’t.”

“Why do you care so much? Other comrades have fallen, and you’ve never showed up begging at my door.”

Nico grits his teeth against the jab. “Jason is… he’s different. It wasn’t a war. It wasn’t even his trial.”

“He intervened by choice.”

“It wasn’t his _time_. Apollo will vouch for it.”

“Apollo will vouch for anything that suits his fancy.”

“Father,” Nico says. “Please.”

Hades looks at him for a long, long moment. Nico stares back, because he’s not ten anymore and he’s not twelve anymore, and he has done too much for his father to not be worthy of something. They both know that much.

His father sighs, deep and immortal and heavy. “At least you’ve chosen someone better than that Jackson boy. He’s been down here too many times to waltz back out again.”

Nico doesn’t say anything, even as he feels his face burn, because he doesn’t want to risk losing this. He can’t mess up this opportunity. 

“Are you saying I can take him back?” He asks carefully. 

“I suppose so,” Hades says. 

“How?”

“You come and go as you please,” his father says, voice somehow chiding and proud all at once. “You just have to find him, first.”

It sounds too simple. Nico doesn’t trust simplicity anymore. 

“That’s it? There’s no trick? No Orpheus trap?”

Hades pauses, like he almost doesn’t want to tell him. Gods can be so immature. 

“Don’t touch him,” he says eventually. 

Nico blinks. “That wasn’t a problem with Hazel.”

“Hazel is my daughter. Jason Grace is not. You can tether him to the living world with whatever else you like, but you cannot touch him until you’ve reached the sun.”

“How will I shadow travel if I can’t touch him?” He doesn’t mean to say it out loud, but Hades raises his eyebrows all the same.

“You’re my son, aren’t you? I’m sure you can find another way out. You always do.”

iii. 

Obviously, he’s in Elysium. Nico would be having words with the judges if he wasn’t. 

When he sees him, sitting in the grass on the far end of the island, Nico feels himself go weak. It’s been so long. Even as a ghost—even _dead_ , he thinks—he’s exactly as bright as Nico remembers.

Nico forces himself not to sprint towards him like some girl in a romance movie. He walks, because he is not in a romance movie and, if he was, he definitely would not be the love interest.

Jason, when he looks up and catches sight of him, jumps to his feet like he’s been shocked. A smile blooms on his face, like he’s just visiting camp instead of lounging in the afterlife.

Thank the gods Jason doesn’t try to hug him. Nico won’t lose before he’s even begun.

“Nico,” Jason says, voice hushed and happy and nothing like Nico deserves, ”I haven’t seen you in forever.”

Nico swallows, “That’s what happens when you die like a dumbass.” 

Jason at least has the sense to look abashed. “I mean before that.”

“You were the one who decided to go to school,” Nico says, forcing down the rock in his throat. “Don’t know why the hell you’d wanna do that.” 

Like Jason hadn’t spent what felt like hours talking with him about it, whether or not he should go, who he would be letting down, all the shit leftover from when he had a legion to lead and that bone deep moral compass. The war is over, Nico remembers telling him, as long as you keep your shrine promise, there’s nothing else holding you back.

Except maybe me, he had thought, and then buried it down deep. He’d had his fill of pining, he had told himself, even as Jason had looked him full in the face and said: are you sure? Like Nico’s was the most important opinion and not his (soon to be ex) girlfriend’s. 

Jason just shrugs, noncommittal, pretending just like Nico is. “Thought I’d take a break.”

“What, by jumping back in? It wasn’t your prophecy.”

“I had to do something,” Jason says, with his stupid moral compass.

“It wasn’t your prophecy,” Nico says again, the words harsh and clipped because if he doesn’t keep them sharp his voice might break instead. 

“I couldn’t do nothing.”

Nico forces back the _yes you could have, you could have just stayed in school or stayed at camp and taken a real fucking break._

Instead he says: “I know. But it wasn’t your prophecy. So I’m here to bring you back.”

If Jason was still breathing, Nico is sure it would have caught in his throat. “What?” he gasps, small and disbelieving.

“I’m here to bring you back,” he says again, forcing his voice to be harder, more sure of himself.

Jason stares at him for a long moment, and then, achingly soft: “Nico. You know I can’t—“

Nico shakes his head, “I worked it out with my father. I really did. I’m—“ he chokes down something embarrassingly close to a sob, “You died before your time; I’m here to bring you back.”

Jason just keeps staring, and for a moment, Nico thinks the unthinkable: what if he refuses? What if he—what if he doesn’t _want_ to come back? But then Jason smiles, something like watery relief—the dead cannot cry, Nico knows quite well, but Jason is not meant to be dead. Nico thinks that if anyone could defy the laws of the underworld without trying, it would be Jason.

Still, the impossible tears do not fall, and Nico wonders if he imagined them.

“Nico,” he says again, “I... can’t imagine Hades was very happy about this.”

Nico almost laughs, “He wasn’t. But it wasn’t your time. And he owes me.”

“And you would really use that favor for me?” Cautious, like Jason still doesn’t quite believe that he’s here. 

“Of course,” he says, with enough conviction that he almost flushes.

Jason’s eyebrows do that thing they do when he thinks Nico has done something particularly endearing. Nico has seen it a hundred times; it’s one of his favorite things to see. But he’s had his fill of pining, so he ignores it.

Jason steps forwards, arms outstretched, and Nico nearly jumps backwards to avoid him. Confusion flashes across Jason’s face, and so Nico says, “I can’t touch you. That’s the—that’s the stupid Orpheus trap. I can’t touch you till we get out.”

Jason’s face does this odd thing where it looks like he can’t decide between being sad or disappointed. “How are we gonna shadow travel?” 

“That’s what _I_ said,” Nico overplays it a bit, to make Jason smile. “But whatever. I’m not a fuckin’ amateur; I know I few ways out.”

Jason smiles, fond enough to make Nico’s heart ache, “Lead the way.”

iv.

He’s decided that the quickest and easiest way out is the way he came: Orpheus and his voice are long gone, but the passage remains. Somehow, it’s much darker than it was on his way in. 

It’s so dark that Nico can barely see where he’s going, let alone see Jason. The urge to reach out to find him, to grasp his wrist and make sure he’s truly here, overwhelms him for a moment—he forces his hand into a fist and resolutely does not do that. 

He’s never longed to touch before, not this strongly. He’s so used to Jason’s hands and the feel of his shoulder solid under his head the times he’d fall asleep during one of their contraband movie nights; he’s never noticed how much he appreciated it. Strange, he thinks--Bianca’s hands in his hair and the sound of Jason’s laugh--the things you don’t value until they’re gone.

“Jason,” he says softly, hardly above a whisper.

“I’m here,” he assures, “I’m just—trying not to get too close.”

So I don’t run into you, goes unsaid. 

“Oh. Good.”

“I can be smart sometimes.” 

Nico huffs a halfhearted laugh, so that the dark doesn’t crush him with its weight, “Barely.” 

“Hey, Nico,” Jason says after a moment. His footsteps are silent behind Nico; no physical mass, yet, and the thought is so wrong that it almost scares him. Two wars under his belt, countless days spent in the land of the dead, a trip through literal hell, and the fact that he can’t hear Jason walking behind him is what scares him. 

“Yeah?”

“This is the same path Orpheus took, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Why is it so… dark? If his test was not to look at her, shouldn’t he have been able to actually see her if he did?”

Nico hums. Considers. His father is kind to him, sometimes, but he is also fair, immortal; his tests are tests regardless of who is taking them.

“Because I’m allowed to see you,” he answers, “It would make it too easy.” And then, “I can’t hear your footsteps.”

His voice wavers dangerously. 

Jason, voice warm and steady even though he’s the one who’s fucking dead, says: “I’m still here; I’ll keep talking, so you don’t forget.”

v.

Jason keeps talking. Nico doesn’t forget.

He fills him in on everything he’s missed, about school and the kickball team he was on and all the reading he has to do, about the friends he’s made and how he thinks Nico would like some of them, about how much he’s missed him and how he wishes Nico would get a damn cell phone already so they could actually talk more regularly, and Nico listens closely every step of the way.

vi.

Jason is on him the moment they reach the sunlight.

The earth slides shut behind them, and Nico spins around even as the bright light blinds him, reaching for Jason’s wrist or his arms or whatever he can reach; Jason beats him to it, barreling into him and wrapping him up in a hug so tight Nico feels like he might suffocate. 

He doesn’t, and Jason holds him impossibly tighter and Nico holds him back; his body is warm against him—alive, and solid and alive—and, to his horror, he feels tears prick at his eyes.

“Nico,” Jason is saying, over and over and grasping at Nico’s jacket, his arms, his hair like he can’t believe he’s real—what must it feel like, to be able to _feel_ again? “Nico, holy shit—gods, I—“

And of course Jason is crying, the big baby, and Nico feels fingers carding through his hair and he squeezes his eyes shut and breathes. He did it. He did it, he did it, he’s back. Jason is here, he’s alive and solid and real. 

“Fuck,” he breathes, and his voice breaks into a sob. 

He doesn’t know how long they stand there, in front of the fucking Hollywood sign in the middle of the day, but when Jason finally lets up, Nico has mostly composed himself. 

Jason doesn’t go far, and his hand doesn’t leave Nico’s shoulder, warm against the crook of his neck. 

“Thank you,” he says, “I literally owe you my life. I don’t—thank you.”

Nico, valiantly, does not cry again; it’s been so long since he’s felt this emotional, this raw, open like a nerve. “Of course. It wasn’t your—“

“It wasn’t my time,” Jason laughs, “You keep saying that. But… what if it had been?”

It’s a sincere question. Nico answers before he can stop himself—pathetically fast, “I would’ve brought you back anyways.”

He flushes, closes his eyes at how desperate he sounds, for how fucking ridiculous and _obvious_ he is, but he doesn’t take it back.

There is stunned silence for a moment, for two, and then Jason’s hand slides slowly up his shoulder, his neck, and comes to rest softly against his jaw. Jason, gently, tilts his head up; Nico, carefully, opens his eyes. 

“Nico,” Jason says, so soft Nico thinks his heart might break. “Do you...?” He trails off, either unable or unwilling to say it, and Nico laughs despite himself.

“I think it’s pretty fucking obvious at this point,” half-bitter, ready for Jason to push him away or tell him to leave. Jason does neither of those things. 

Instead, he bends down, forehead hot against Nico’s. “Thank the gods,” he breathes, “Me too.” 

For a moment, Nico can’t breathe. Can’t believe it. Thinks, wildly, that he’s lying, that he hates him, that he’s making fun of him—

And then Jason’s other hand slides up, fingers curled light against his cheek; something slides into place and settles in his chest, and Nico feels as though he is finally home. 

vii.

“Wait till the others see me,” Jason says later, voice full of joy and fingers laced with Nico’s as they walk, “Percy’s gonna lose his shit.”

**Author's Note:**

> this semester has barely let me Breathe pls comment to donate some oxygen


End file.
